Well the gun shop I used to work at closed down day before yesterday... we all said our goodbyes to the old place, and locked the doors.

Anyway, I figure I might as well write out one of the greatest memories I have from that place.

We were just about to close one night and we had a Korean war vet come in with his grandson. Figured, eh, I'll stick around and take care of him, after all, he's a veteran. The least I can do is help him out a little.

Well we got to talking, and I noticed the tattoo on his arm of a serial number and asked if he was a POW. He said "No, that's the serial number of the rifle that saved my life".

Well that sounded like it had a good story behind it, so I asked what he meant. Turns out his squad had gotten ambushed while on a patrol, and as the attackers came out of the bush, he felt a large bump on the end of his rifle and saw that an NK soldier had impaled himself on the bayonet.

If he hadn't had his rifle facing that direction, he would've been killed. Well, I looked at the serial number and had a momentary deja-vu experience, excused myself, looked in the back for about 2 minutes, and sure enough there was that exact rifle (Springfield armory, 1945 production receiver, 1945 SA barrel, upgraded rear sights, uncut op rod, Harrington and Richards trigger pack as I remember it), unfortunately wearing some replacement parts after rearsenal, but the receiver and barrel were original.

I figured, alright, it's time to make this guy's day. Walked out from the back, said "Does this look familiar?". Well, it took him a second of looking to figure out what I meant exactly, and when he saw that serial number, a small smile spread over his face. He took it, field stripped it, checked the barrel, put it back together, handed it to his grandson, said "This is what I carried in the war", and got rewarded with "Grandpa you're so cool!!".

That had to be the proudest moment in that old man's life, because not but half a second later I saw a tear run down from the corner of his eye.

Well God knows I couldn't, in good conscience, let him leave without that rifle. 'Course in good conscience I couldn't charge him for it either, so I called the owner, explained the situation, and 2 minutes later we were filling out the paperwork to transfer it over to him. Wrote it off as a business expense... which in retrospect was probably a bad idea since that was the only gun that left the shop that month.